"Eat it Yang, or Lau. Whatever, they all look the same." - Vitaminwater

It doesn't seem so weird... until you realize the Asian guys aren't played by a couple of random actors--they're American Olympian badminton players, Howard Bach and Bob Malaythong. So why the hell were they called Yang and Lau? Were "Howard" and "Bob" too hard to pronounce?

The ad was supposed to generate exposure for badminton prior to the 2008 Olympics. If Vitaminwater was trying to publicize under appreciated athletes, it might have been a smidge more effective to actually tell viewers the players' names instead of giving them names more appropriate for prank calling a Chinese food restaurant.

USA! USA! USA!

3 and #2 Intel (2007) and Microsoft (2009)

When Intel published this advertisement...

...the Internet was quick to point out that the ad featured six black men bowing down to a nerdy white guy. Well, technically it's just one black sprinter who's been lazily Photoshopped six times, but that's sort of worse.

The ad is a metaphor for how Intel's new processors are super fast and make employees way more efficient, but whoever designed the ad has apparently never seen a 100 meter dash before. Instead of sending a message of lightning fast efficiency, we see what's about to be a hilarious pile of concussed sprinters the second the starters pistol goes off.

Still, Intel's gaffe pales in comparison to the whitewashing Microsoft gave a black board member on the Polish version of their website...

Seriously, Microsoft? You're a multi-billion dollar computing conglomerate and you couldn't figure out how to Photoshop one damn hand?

#1. Kia-Ora Orange Drink (1980s)

Now this UK ad does go back a few years (mid-80s) but holy shit, these 40 seconds of insanity make the brain-trusts behind our previous ads look like NAACP Image Award nominees:

If this weren't in color, we would've guessed that it was made around 1950. The other ads we've looked at just had one or two poorly chosen elements, but this is a literal parade of racial stereotypes.

No, seriously. A parade.

The ad is what Uncle Remus's fever hallucinations look like. It's what Aunt Jemima sees when she drops peyote. It is not a viewing experience that makes us thirsty for some orange drink.

We've start with some jive-talking crows, something that was already offensive when Dumbo used it in 1941, and we only regress from there. Follow along as they run through all the harmful black stereotypes from our embarrassing century. There's ...

... a mammy ...

...Sunflower from Fantasia, and finally ...

... the basketball-playing crow.

Hey, but at least they resisted the urge to make the next word out of the sax "watermelon."

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